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Life
and Death in The City
By
Timothy Wheeler, M.D.
This
article appeared in the May 31, 2000 edition of the San
Diego Union-Tribune, this
article will also appear in the Orange
County Register, and the Minneapolis
Star-Tribune.
By
now it is an all too familiar nightmare.
Violent armed robbers take over a restaurant, terrorizing
employees and customers.
The predators herd the hapless victims into a refrigerator with
the intention of killing them.
Shots are fired, and the gruesome disaster ends.
Wait.
This isn’t the story of a Wendy’s restaurant in New York City last
week.
It is the eerily similar drama played out in a Shoney's
restaurant in Anniston, Alabama in 1991.
But this story had a just, if not exactly happy ending. That
time, it was the criminals, not the good guys, who were shot.
In
nearly identical scenarios--the
violent takeover of a restaurant by armed criminals--one
outcome was a hideous tragedy, and the other a triumph of courage. The
difference in results was no accident.
It was the logical conclusion of deliberate and widely
divergent public policy in the two states where the crimes occurred.
New
York doesn’t trust its citizens to arm themselves for self-defense.
Alabama does.
Thomas Terry, the hero of Anniston, was discreetly but legally
carrying a .45 caliber handgun when the robbers took over the
restaurant.
Facing two armed thugs, Terry shot one dead and severely
wounded the other.
None of the other patrons was harmed, other than Terry, who
sustained a grazing wound to the hip.
Alabama
law allows broad discretion for local law enforcement officers to
grant handgun carry licenses to “suitable person[s].”
Thomas Terry amply proved himself such a suitable person by
risking his own life to save the lives of nearly two dozen customers.
What an incalculably precious gift he gave them!
Affirming Alabama’s statutory recognition of the right to
carry a gun, the state constitution proclaims “that every citizen
has a right to bear arms in defense of himself and the state.”
By
contrast, the New York gunmen faced no opposition to their unspeakable
cruelty.
In fact, under New York’s strict gun control laws, any
restaurant employee or patron who had armed himself would be
considered as guilty as the murderers. Only the wealthy and the
politically connected can lawfully carry a handgun.
And
so it was by this dictate of law that the New York killers enjoyed the
unfettered opportunity to force six men and one woman into a walk-in
refrigerator, bind and gag them, and shoot each one in the head.
Five died and two were gravely injured.
Civilized
people recoil from such vile acts.
Those who would ban firearms seek comfort in the vain hope that
if we pass laws to get rid of guns, such horrors would cease.
Against all experience, against all that science tells us about
the protective value of guns in responsible hands, the gun banners
babble on.
The
most recent spectacle of babblers was the Million Mom March.
According to a Washington Times report, fewer than 500,000
gun-control advocates gathered on the Mall in Washington D.C. to call
for more gun laws.
They believe, apparently, that the 20,000 or more gun control
laws we already have are not enough.
The
chief babbler was daytime TV “Queen of Nice” Rosie O’Donnell.
But O’Donnell wasn’t so nice last year, when she savaged
guest Tom Selleck on the air for being a spokesman for the NRA, a
charge he denied.
In another pronouncement, she recommended the imprisonment of
all gun owners.
This
year, O’Donnell has relaxed her stringent anti-gun stance--for
herself, anyway--by
employing a private security guard.
It seems the guard has applied for a permit to carry a gun. But
Rosie insists her security measures are for the safety of her child,
so her flip-flopping really isn’t rank hypocrisy.
Such
elitism is a undercurrent of all laws prohibiting citizen
self-defense. In the post-Civil War South, that elitism was directed
against blacks.
In New York at the beginning of the 20th century, it
was directed at people marked as foreign-born anarchists and
revolutionaries.
Today
the elitism is more egalitarian.
In those states without “shall issue” carry laws, police
chiefs practice the elitism of local politics. Under discretionary
firearm carry laws, affluent celebrities and politicians are often
deemed “suitable persons,” but everyday people--Wendy’s
employees, for example--are
not.
The
November elections will be in part a referendum on gun ownership.
To vote intelligently, we must consider that firearms are used
to save lives far more often than they are used to take them.
As decades of criminology research has shown, it is the career
criminal, not the regular citizen, who misuses guns most.
Let
us remember the life-saving utility of firearms in good hands. At the
polls, let us vote to preserve that right of self-defense in memory of
five innocent souls.
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Responsible Gun Ownership | More on the Second
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Timothy Wheeler, M.D., is the Director of Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership, a Project of The Claremont
Institute.
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